So? Facebook makes profit, the gas station down the street makes profit.
How does a software engineer at Google worth more value than one at timbuktu? No, they are not. They just are not in the right place at the right time.
Do you think selling ads is changing the world? Do you think that makes you worth more than someone else? Wake up and smell the coffee.
The gas station down the street isn't paying its employees six figure salaries. That employee might be making $7.25 an hour, which is the federal limit. Assuming 40 hours per week and 52 weeks per year (no time off!), that's 15k before taxes. Is that gas station clerk a better/more worthwhile person than a gas station clerk in timbuktu?
> Do you think that makes you worth more than someone else?
Getting paid more than someone else doesn't make you a better person than someone else. It just means you're earning more income, and that company is willing to pay you that income for any multitude of reasons. That's it.
Programmers can provide immense value to companies, and companies make handsome profits despite paying their engineers immense salaries. This also has to do with cost of living in some areas: chicago is more expensive than many places in the world, so if you want to base a company in chicago and pay someone who lives in chicago to work for you, you need more money. It's not rocket science.
I think many companies don't need to be based in SF or Seattle, etc, but that's another discussion.
When I say "value" in this context I'm just talking about money. I'm not making a moral value judgement about individuals or the company overall. All I'm saying is that employees are clearly creating more monetary value for the company than what they're being compensated.
How do we know that employees provide more value than their compensation? Because Google makes profit.